Christmas & NYE

Happy New Year!

December has been an awful month!  We have rebuilt our house this year, we bought a bungalow we planned to extend but when we looked into it we found it was riddled with damp and we were better off knocking it down and starting from scratch.  Our deadline for completion was Christmas.

So of course we were running behind schedule, the tiler we employed did an awful job so we sacked him and it now became Mark's job.  All the trades were busy in the run up to Christmas so we couldn't get anyone in, the tiler really messed us up the most as it put us a lot further behind schedule.

Luckily business is quiet in December so it meant we could be there most days and we did manage to get it in a liveable condition and Mark managed to get the stairs in with the help of family on 20th so we moved in on 21st.  All be it without doors, skirting (any upstairs electrics/lights - another trade that screwed us over, the electricians). 

Our Christmas tree went up after lunch on 22nd, it is a beautiful 10ft tree and I just had to put it up, seems such a shame we couldn't have finished earlier and it have been up longer as it looks stunning.

What I would say is, if you can afford it have your builder do everything.  The project management was fine but it is the trades you are employing, you don't know them, even people who recommend them, are well reviewed, have years of experience etc  They still mess up!  They don't care really, they take your money and they are gone.  If the builder employs the trades, he has a relationship with them already, he knows them, has worked with them so they aren't going to mess up are they?  If they do it's the builder's responsibility.  If we do this again we will definitely do it this way or we just won't do it. 

Anyway we are in, things are slowly getting finished and we enjoyed Christmas and had a NYE party, it's a good job our settee hasn't arrived as the lounge made a great disco!  I had bought Macy a disco light bulb for Christmas, it's great as it fits like a normal bulb but it spins and throws all the pretty lights down.

Christmas Eve Gingerbread

NYE Pinata